


And So I End

by bbwrites



Category: Voyná i mir | War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (TV 2016)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, abortion and suicide is implied so be careful, also anatole/helene shippers better stay like 500 million miles away from this, god what do i tag this as, mild woobification, or however the hell you say that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-17
Updated: 2017-01-17
Packaged: 2018-09-18 01:54:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9360398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bbwrites/pseuds/bbwrites
Summary: There comes a time when everyone must die and Hélène knew she wasn’t the exception.





	

**Author's Note:**

> i just... love helene also I haven't read ALL of w&p so... sorry if i fucked up lol

There comes a time when everyone must die and Hélène knew she wasn’t the exception.

When she was younger, she would have _lamented_ (a strong word, but one that gets a point across) dying—an unfashionable prospect, one she felt she did not deserve. But Hélène had grown up, and with age her thoughts on death had changed. In her present state of mind, she saw death as a weapon one could yield, much like a sword or a lace fan. With that knowledge, Hélène knows that someday she will wield death, with it she will either win or lose her final battle. However, her final battle comes sooner than she would have ever thought.

War is a servant to death, so it wasn’t very surprising her end came in a war. Her ending, _the final act_ , was a long time in the making. The final act of Hélène’s short (too short to be fulfilling and too long to be truly _iconic_ ) life began when she married Pierre Bezukhov. It was a loveless marriage and nothing good ever comes from loveless marriages. So it is really his fault that she took so many lovers—the absence of his love caused her to find it elsewhere (this is what she tells herself, when she almost feels bad for him). She does fall in love during the marriage, but it’s not to her husband (it never could be- he's on a completely different track in life than her, if they were to cross—). Fydor Dolokhov is the only person she's ever even thought about loving. Of course it never works out and she ends up humiliated and _profoundly_ alone.

Later Dolokhov proposes to Sonya Rostova but she turns him down and Hélène feels… _something_.

Then her stupid brother (God— she loves Anatole but he can be so damn difficult) decides he’s in love with Natasha Rostova and Hélène doesn’t know why she decides to help him. When everything goes wrong and Natasha- young, stupid, _lovely_ Natasha - downs arsenic, she feels _something_ again.

Natasha lives but Hélène knows her end is coming.

In the end, Hélène finds herself between lovers and with a baby, a burden that she needs to be rid of. Her _finale ultimo_ finds her drowning a distasteful mixture of medicine and red wine (her favorite drink, always so _elegant_ ). In her final ascension to the status of icon, a sad, sad causality of war, she finds herself feeling a _something_ she could never hope to define.


End file.
